Interior Designers Hired For Dorm Rooms
The annual return to school is well underway, including colleges and universities. The tradition of parents taking their freshman sons and daughters to their colleges includes move-in day. Many of these institutions require incoming students to live on campus, specifically in the dorms.
Those who went through the ritual will remember the small room built from cinder blocks and painted some shade of beige. Many incoming students arrived with rolled-up posters to adorn the walls, along with other sparse necessities, including clothes. For the new wave of entitled students and their overly indulgent parents, the status quo won’t do.
Enter a new, lucrative company offering interior design for $ 20,000 per room. Shelly Gates, a former teacher and social media sensation, started Mary Margaret Designs after racking up 26 million views on a dorm renovation. At that price, she only needs to take on 15-20 dorms per year. She says, “Most dorms start with cinderblock walls and fluorescent lighting, and honestly, they can feel a little cold and intimidating. We love taking those spaces and making them feel warm, happy, and like home.”
Gates is not doing anything illegal and, in a so-called free market, has every right to sell her wares to anyone willing to pay what ordinary people would spend on a used car. Even if the parents are filthy rich, why would they allow their children to live in a place far more opulent than other students’ rooms?
A strong argument against this excess is that parents, thinking they are helping their children, are actually raising self-centered young adults. Attending college is a part of young adults’ preparation for independence, although not the only path. Those who choose higher education are not only pursuing an academic goal, but the system is inherently structured to reinforce life’s hierarchical reality.
A freshman isn’t on the precipice of graduation; only a senior is. Freshmen specifically have less than upperclassmen because they cannot live in shared apartments. Typically, freshmen start with required courses before taking classes in their major. These practices guide students from the lowest level to the highest: graduation. Even one missing credit prevents graduation. Frankly, this is the only thing higher education is doing right.
When the dorm room is decorated far beyond its original meaning, the hierarchy system is destroyed, and the embarrassment of riches ensues. It encourages young people to think wrongly about how life actually works by trying to hopscotch over necessary steps to success. Maybe this is why so many graduates think they are worth more in the market than the skills they bring. Soon they learn how wrong their notions are in the real world.
The idea of self-worth extends to personal relationships, too. Plenty of young people have formed opinions that, once they reach a level of maturity, they are on the same level as those with years of experience. You see this in young adults who think they know as much as, or more than, their parents or older coworkers, and who opt for advice from a stranger they trust more on social media.
Parents must try to instill in their children a healthy respect for life’s hierarchy, where those with more life experience should be respected for the wisdom and status they have earned.
The saying ‘what goes around comes around,’ and some of the young, when they get a bit more seasoned, will find out the hard way.